David Cameron has helped his party rediscover its most lethal weapon: loyalty

For the first time in perhaps a decade, not a drop of blood has been shed on the floor of a Conservative party conference. What was for so many years a vicious gladiatorial arena this week turned into a serene botanical garden. According to precedent, this should have been the conference when David Cameron faced protest from a party which he has dragged through all manner of ideological contortions. But instead, he received the polite applause of an optimistic audience. It is not at all natural.

Nor was it particularly helpful. The script which Conservative managers had written for the week was one where Mr Cameron and his lieutenants would demonstrate his steely resolve by facing down the wicked ‘Tory Right’. The speeches of the shadow Cabinet were fortified with menacing sentences. There would be no bowing to pressure, and the Cameroon army was braced to withstand the charge of the refuseniks. But the enemy did not turn up — at least not in any numbers.

So instead we witnessed the bizarre spectacle of a political party seeking to manufacture a split which did not really happen. At 10 p.m. on Monday, for example, MPs were sent an electronic message that George Osborne was preparing to ‘answer all those who call for unfunded tax cuts’ in his speech. Yet not even Lord Tebbit was playing ball; he wanted tax cuts, but funded by a reduction in public spending growth. Strip away the hyperbole, and this is what is being proposed by Mr Cameron.

It is easy to be infuriated by the language adopted by the Cameron leadership over tax. Its ‘stability before tax cuts’ slogan is based on the nonsensical suggestion that the two are in direct conflict. The phrase ‘sharing the proceeds of economic growth between spending and tax cuts’ is infuriatingly vague — but it also means that no decisions on tax have to be taken yet.